


Improve your poison quality

by xyzan21



Series: Is this the best you can do? [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Annoyed Merlin, BAMF Merlin (Merlin), Knives, Lancelot (Merlin) Lives, Merlin is So Done (Merlin), Merlin is good with knives, Poison, Sassy Merlin (Merlin)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:27:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24393511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xyzan21/pseuds/xyzan21
Summary: Merlin, Arthur and the knights are ambushed by a sorcerer because aren't they always?Merlin is, understandably, pissed off.
Series: Is this the best you can do? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1823323
Comments: 37
Kudos: 875





	Improve your poison quality

**Author's Note:**

> So, I have this head canon that because of his magic Merlin builds up a resistance to poison. A bit like when your body builds up antibodies when you’re sick to defend yourself against the illness. And basically, if he is poisoned by something it doesn’t affect him if he is poised by it again.

“Bow to your new King, servant,” the sorcerer said, spreading out his arms to either side of himself. 

“Arthur’s been King for quite some time now. I would hardly call him a new King,” Merlin replied.

They were being held captive by a rogue sorcerer because of course they were. Arthur had decided it would be a great idea to take over patrol for the day. Merlin had obviously disagreed but had anybody listened to him? No, of course they hadn’t. They never did. 

It was just his luck, thought Merlin, that the King he was destined to protect was a murder magnet.

The others, Arthur, Gwaine, Leon, Percival, Elyan and Lancelot were bound to trees separately. Spelled to stay still and silent. While Merlin had been brought to face the sorcerer.

“Imbecile. I mean me of course. I am your King now.”

“Huh. I wasn’t aware you’d actually managed to achieve your no doubt very elaborate plan and manage to take over. You must forgive me, news is hard to come by on patrol.”

Merlin really wasn’t in the mood for this right now, he still had a lot of work to do back at the castle. Couldn’t the sorcerer just speed it up already and try to kill him? Or maybe let them go but that seemed rather unlikely.

The sorcerer forced a smile. “When I am in power, I will give you anything and everything you want. All you have to do is join me. Tell me what you have learned from your time in Camelot. You will be rewarded. You can have all the power you want. You can have the Pendragon as your manservant. Make him see how much you do for him. Join me and all you ever wanted is yours.”

Ugh. He was one of _those_ sorcerers. He should have guessed by the pompous robes.

“If you want to convince me to abandon them in order to join you, you’ll need to do a better job. I’ve been offered power many times, by many different people, a lot of whom were much more powerful and influential than you. I’ll give you the same answer I gave them: fuck off. I don’t desire power, especially when it is offered by someone as twisted as you.”

The smile fell, his eyes hardened. “Fine,” he hissed. “If you won’t accept my gracious offer that’s your loss. You can still help me. It’ll be more painful for you. Give up the secrets of Camelot and no harm will come to you.” 

“You’ll need to do better than that. You aren’t very threatening. I have faced so much worse than you and that’s not even taking into account all the magical creatures I’ve come face to face with over the years.”

The sorcerer growled, then with a wave of his hand and some quietly muttered words, a dining chair appeared in the middle of the clearing. Merlin stared at it. Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that? He had been lugging those incredibly heavy chairs all over the castle when he could have just magicked some up!

The sorcerer snapped his fingers and two of his goons stepped forward to manhandle Merlin into the chair. They removed the rope from his wrists and instead secured his hands with the metal chains that had appeared along with the chair. How delightful.

One of them grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head back. It looked like it was going to rain soon. Merlin hoped they made it back before it started to pour. He really didn’t want to do chores while soaked through.

The sorcerer produced a vial which contained a clear liquid. “This is your last chance, choose to serve me and I will not harm you.”

“I have and will only ever serve one man and his name is Arthur Pendragon. And I will do so until the day I die.”

“I’m afraid you don’t have much time left to do that anymore. It is a beautiful day to die on. Don’t you think, servant?”

“That depends on your definition of a beautiful day.” Merlin muttered.

The sorcerer stepped towards him and the goon who wasn’t holding his head back, forced his jaw open. The liquid was poured down his throat. It had no taste.

“Poison. How original,” he snarked as soon as the man let go of his jaw. “What did you use?”

“Thallium. With a little magic to speed up the process. The pain should set in in about five minutes. Enjoy your last moments of pain free bliss.”

“Ah. Thallium, makes sense. It had no taste. Interesting choice.”

The sorcerer stared at him in confusion. “Pardon? You sound very relaxed for someone who seems to know about the effects of the poison.”

Merlin rolled his eyes. “Do you know how many times I’ve been poisoned? It's getting a little repetitive.”

The sorcerer just stared at him, stunned. They waited in silence. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Nothing happened.

Merlin had expected as much. He had noticed that once he was poisoned by a substance, he was immune to it afterwards. And luckily for him he had already been poisoned with Thallium a few times when he was fighting someone or another to protect Arthur.

While they waited Merlin silently and as inconspicuously as he could, started to pick the lock of his chains. He had become quite a good lock pick. 

When he felt the lock snap open he started talking: “Soooo, do you have a Plan B or are we just going to wait for something to happen. Even though we both know that nothing is going to happen if it hasn’t set in by now.”

“How are you not affected by this?!”

Merlin shrugged as best as he could while being shackled to a chair. “Maybe it’s not me. Maybe you just don’t have very effective poisons. You should improve your poison quality. If you wanted to poison me you could have at least done it properly. What was that? One of Gaius’ experimental healing potions? You need a new poison guy.”

The sorcerer glared at him then he gestured to one of the goons who had returned to his side after Merlin had been poisoned.

“This doesn’t seem to be working. Let’s try a different approach. Maybe you’ll be chattier after we cut up your companions a little.”

The two goons made their way over to Arthur pulling their swords on the way. As soon as the sorcerer turned his back on Merlin, he leapt out of his chair silently.

Arthur looked on in shock. He was frozen due to the spell the sorcerer had put on him and his knights but he doubted that he could have moved anyways. Merlin’s whole demeaner had changed as soon as the men turned their backs on him.

Apparently, he could be quiet if he wished to. They would need to talk about the fact that he always made so much noise while they were hunting.

Arthur had watched Merlin snark at the sorcerer, get poisoned, act like it didn’t matter and pick the lock on his chains. Nothing about that was particularly out of character. Well maybe not the lock picking part. Another thing they would have to talk about.

Now Merlin threw the chain that had previously bound him to the chair, it wrapped itself around the neck of the man who was closest to him. Merlin yanked at the chain with a strength Arthur hadn’t known his manservant possessed.

The man’s neck snapped. He slumped to the ground, eyes wide and glassy.

The other man stared at his fallen companion then he clenched his jaw and charged at Arthur. He was standing right in front of Arthur now. He raised his sword and Arthur braced himself for the blow.

Nothing. No pain. No cold metal.

Arthur opened his eyes. His attacker was gasping for air. The tip of a blade stuck out of his throat. Blood was gushing everywhere. Flowing down the column of his neck in rivulets. He fell to his knees hard. Then keeled to the side.

Arthur looked up from his body and saw Merlin staring at the dead man, his hand was still raised. Had Merlin just thrown a knife and actually hit his intended target?! 

When the man made no attempt to get up, Merlin shifted his intense gaze toward the sorcerer.

Up until that moment the latter had seemed to be paralysed. Arthur new the feeling, no thanks to him.

The sorcerer took one look at the angry expression on Merlin’s face, turned and ran.

“Oh no you don’t,” Merlin muttered and took off after him.

After about ten minutes of flashing lights, screams (frightened from the sorcerer, angry from Merlin), a bolt of lightning and some ground rumbling, Merlin returned. Looking no worse for wear. 

Merlin trudged towards Lancelot, pulled a knife out from beneath his sleeve and started hacking at his bonds. Since when did Merlin carry knives with him? And it had to be knives plural because the other knife was still sticking out of the dead man’s neck.

Once he had freed Lancelot, he moved on to Gwaine’s bonds. While Lancelot made his way over to retrieve their weapons from where they were stashed. Then Lance and Gwaine untied the others.

Merlin walked over to the dead bodies in front of Arthur. He pulled his knife free and wiped the blood off on the dead man’s clothes. He did all of this nonchalantly. Only the tightness around his mouth and eyes showed his discomfort.

Lancelot was the first to break the silence: “Are you sure the poison had no effect on you? I don’t want you suddenly dying on us because you didn’t do anything to heal yourself.”

Merlin shrugged and walked over to a patch of plants, poured a little water over it, held it out to Lancelot and stuck it in his mouth. Lancelot rolled his eyes with a fond exasperation. Arthur thought the plant looked a lot like mint but then again he wasn’t a physician.

“Hey Percival, can you do me a favour and smash up that chair?” Merlin asked.

Percival shrugged and walked over to demolish the chair.

“Why?” Arthur asked. To exhausted to form a proper question. 

“Well we can’t just leave a dining chair standing around in the woods. How strange would that look? Besides we can use it as kindling.” Merlin was collecting the metal chains and using his elbow and hand to wrap them up neatly.

“What happened to the sorcerer?” Leon asked.

“Dead.”

The knights exchanged uneasy glances. Merlin was acting very calm considering he had just been poisoned, threatened with torture and killed three men.

“Merlin,” Elyan started carefully. “Were these the first people you’ve killed?”

He snorted in response, it sounded strange. Not like his usual happy snort of laughter.

“How many people have you killed?” Arthur asked, a little overwhelmed by this new information.

Merlin stared at him strangely. “Do you remember the exact number of lives you’ve taken?”

“Well, no. But I’m a soldier. And we’ve been through a lot of battles.”

“Exactly,” Merlin nodded. “We’ve fought a lot of battles. And just because I don’t wear one of your utterly inconvenient cloaks, doesn’t mean I’m not a soldier.” 

When no one said something, he continued: “We need to decide what to do with the bodies. The clothing they are wearing indicates that they come somewhere from the south.”

“Are you not… _bothered_ by this?” Arthur exclaimed.

Merlin glared at him. “I _despise_ killing. I hate taking lives but I will do what I have to, to keep you guys safe. I am rather disgusted to say that I have gotten used to watching people die because of me. Though I only dispose of those who threaten Camelot or her King. These are another three I can add to the tally.”

With that he got up and faced the woods. He let out a sharp whistle and waited. A few seconds later they all heard hooves galloping in their direction. Merlin’s horse was in front followed shortly by the others.

Merlin took the rains of his horse and stashed the metal chain in his saddle bag. Then he turned to his companions who were staring at him in confusion.

“I thought it would be beneficial training them to come when I signalled. We get ambushed rather a lot and I’m tired of listening to all of you complaining about the trek back to the castle.”

When the others just continued to stare Merlin sighed and turned back to the horses, he seemed to be giving a ‘ _can you believe them?’_ look.

What the hell just happened? He really needed to have that talk with his manservant. There seemed to be rather a lot he didn’t know about him.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this isn’t quite where I thought this would go but whatever. It’ll have to do.


End file.
